Title: Seven Names
Author: Angelholme
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Hurt/Comfort
Status: Complete
Library Category: General
Pairings: Luna/Hermione
Summary: Seventy three years after being forced out of the magical world, Sarah Jean Taylor is finally coming home. And there are quite a few people who want to talk to her.
Link: Seven Names
This is a beautiful and engaging story which explores in depth the nature of morality during a war and its aftermath on society. Its portrayal of the various crimes committed really left me questioning my own morality and what I would have done in similar scenarios. It is utterly gripping and I really enjoyed reading it. I would rate it a 4.5/5 easily.

 

This is bad, dude. This is so bad that if I tried to list all the ways it's terrible, I'd be here all night.

I'll just point out that it doesn't even meet the really basic minimum standard of punctuating its dialogue correctly and leave it at that. If you can't even be fucked to find+replace closing dialogue tags to insert some commas after the fact, then I can't be fucked to leave a proper review. I won't actually rate the thread as I didn't read a significant part of the story, but this doesn't break the 1/5 barrier.

Edit: in retrospect, this was unnecessarily harsh. I know my opinions w.r.t. the importance of certain writing elements are pretty non-central. I'm leaving this comment unmodified to remind me to be less of a dick in the future. Please check your inbox for my concrit, darknessfalls.

 

See my edited post.

 

Eh. I agreed with you the first time, T3t. This is too much of an eyesore to read.

Ouch.

 

I should've skipped posting the second sentence; such a judgment was inappropriate given I'd only read two sentences of the story. At that point I knew I wouldn't be continuing it, but largely due to my own idiosyncrasies, not because I was aware of any further issues in the story (which may or may not have existed).

The story may very well be as bad as I'd implied, but I really had no way of knowing that.

 

This is my first time ever reviewing anything on this site. I just sat down and read all 73,000 words in one sitting, and I thought it was brilliant. Grammar deficiencies aside, it had great pace, plot, and dialogue. Chapter 10 (The Line) was possibly one of the best scenes that I've ever read. The way that the author integrated the proceedings and flashbacks, the emotions involved...I really haven't seen many scenes quite like that.

I think it has it's issues, it's a little too pro-Hermione, in the sense that she's the only character (of those fleshed out) presented as flawless. Almost everyone else has flaws but Hermione is perfect. If she was a little more human, it would add to the story's realism.

For me, a 4.5/5

 

Truthfully I'd forgotten I've even read this. But with a bit of refreshing I remembered why I did come out of the story enjoying it. The concepts of morality and the rules of engagement in war is always fascinating to me. As a professional person in combat (Navy Sailor) any story that touches on these aspects is refreshing. Too often I read a story where the protagonist is indiscriminately killing without any consequence, be it legal or emotional. The fact that the heroes of the story aren't Saints and their faction perpetrated crimes against the enemy is real and holds true. War makes good people do bad things. I found that piece of the story refreshing, new and attentive.

What stops this from being a 5/5 in my opinion is the characterization. As much as I hate to say this I didn't enjoy the characters very much, not just due to the characterization, but the lack of tension in the plot. Hermione gets captured, and her Jesus' on the cross sacrifice revealed, and everything is well. The weight of her exile was lost, the readers knew she wasn't in danger, and the whole thing seemed more of a mystery to know the flashback than what's happening in the present. Which could have been compelling if we didn't know that Hermione was safe.

Overall this was enjoyable a good read, but it has issues, glaring ones that take this from a potential masterpiece to a respectable 3.5/5

 

Ooh, I liked the premise of this.

The ugly things - I didn't like the lacking way the dialogue was punctuated. There needs to be a ton more commas in this fic. Another thing that bothered me was the amount of 'I' thoughts, i.e. 'I guess I should get up', 'I'm getting old' and 'I guess some things change'. These were very close to each other in the first chapter, and it started getting a bit repetitive.

Even though there was some nitpicking on my part, I think I'm going to read this to the end - I want to find out why there was that 73 year gap. 3/5 for now.

 

Why, oh why, did it have to be Ao3?

Ahem. Anyways, the story. It was thoroughly unlikable.

The grammar is awful. The story is inundated with basic punctuation errors. On their own they may not seem so bad, but when I see one every single sentence I want to dip the author in a vat of acid. Is it really so hard to have someone read over the story for you? Or better yet go on Microsoft Word, where the software automatically spots grammatical errors for you? Apparently it is.

Descriptions were nothing special. Plain and a bit on the bland side, they didn't stimulate my mind's eye.

The premise itself is cool. The execution muddles it up completely and ruins the story for me. 1/5.

Note that I read 8 of the 13 chapters, expecting an improvement, before finally saying "fuck it" and closing the tab.

 

I haven't reviewed something in the Review Board in a while, so I thought I'd contribute.

I'll be organizing my thoughts as I type this, but I can say right away that I this belongs precisely in Almost Recommended. It's not good enough for the upper echelon of the Library, but not bad enough to warrant the Trash Bin.

The author said that this was banged out in 19 days for NaNoWriMo. That's pretty cool, except it reads like on the 20th day it was uploaded with no editing. I think that with a solid editing run, this could be quite good indeed.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. The punctuation is atrocious. Nuff said. Structurally, I thought that after the reveal of why Hermione was banished, the chapter following that, with her finally delivering the names, had little impact. I think some ambiguity or just skipping that final hearing would have been a better choice. And I didn't really care for the fragmented presentation of flashbacks. If you're gonna do a flashback, treat it like a scene.

The writing failed to really engage me. I found myself skipping over substantial portions of the text because I felt like the mystery and its resolution were artificially being withheld from me for the sake of little fragmented scenes that felt very scattershot, like parts glued together incorrectly and in the wrong order.

Characterizations were severely lacking all around. I could only keep track of the big names precisely because they're big names in canon. Minor characters and the OCs were all interchangeable in my head. This lack of distinction fed into my skimming the text. Again, lack of editing is apparent.

Then again... I did read the whole thing in one sitting. Well, maybe 60%, really, given how much I skipped. Still, the mystery setup is good, the buildup is good, resolution is mostly good and the mystery itself played on some interesting themes, although lacking characterization failed to sell the idea to me, it was very much "accept it and move on". And lots of telling, too little showing in general.

There's potential. Disappointed that much of it is wasted. Still, it's a decent time waster for a lazy afternoon. Not awful, not good. 3/5